"Measure your mind's height by the shade it casts."

We cannot, therefore, approve of an acquired style or language, even in the case of the archaic diction of Herodotus, Lucretius, or Spenser.

Secondly, if the language and the thought must be so exquisitely fitted one to the other, so inseparable, what have we to say to translations?

It is true, that there do exist magnificent translations. Take our English Bible for instance. Consider the enthusiastic sonnet of Keats to the honour of Chapman, translator of Homer. But on the other hand is it, as some affirm, a test of a great work that it should be translatable?—and into all languages? Must we deny the greatness of Plato's writings because they could not be worthily translated into the Bushman's language? To sum up the matter, let us hear Newman once more: In proportion as ideas are novel and recondite they would be difficult to put into words, and the very fact of their having insinuated themselves into one language would diminish the chance of that happy accident being repeated in another.”

The exquisite felicity of expression which is natural to the true poet, receives an unconscious approbation from us by our adopting his phrases into the language of common life. If we read through a play of Shakespeare's, such as "Hamlet," we shall be astonished at the extraordinary number that it contains of what we call "common expressions;"

expressions that have been adopted by us into our everyday language. The language of a great poet, expressing what all feel but none else can so well say, passes into the proverbs of a people. Our common speech (it has been finely said) is inlaid with these rich fragments, as in Italy we see the fragments of old mosaics and sculptures let into the common modern masonry of walls and houses.

And now, lastly, what is the message that literature has for us? And in what manner shall we receive this message?

"The whole," says Fichte, "of the training and culture which an age calls learned education, is only a means towards the attainable portion of the Divine Idea, and is only valuable in so far as it actually is such a means, and truly fulfils its purpose."

Education! Is this that Fichte means the same "education" of which we hear so much nowadaysthe panacea for all crime and misery?

Who is the genuine man of letters?" asks Carlyle. A Greek poet may answer him: he is the Sidάokaλoç, the teacher. What then shall he teach? The modern philosopher shall answer that. "Men of letters are a perpetual priesthood, from age to age teaching men that a God is still present in their life; that all appearance, whatsoever we see in the

* τοῖς μὲν γὰρ παιδαρίοισιν

ἔστι διδάσκαλος ὅστις φράζοι, τοῖς ἡβῶσιν δὲ ποιηταί.
Ar. Ran., 1054.

world, is but as a vesture for the Divine Idea-for that which lies at the bottom of appearance."

His it is, also, to elicit our worship of the true. "He who in any way shows us better than we knew before that a lily of the field is beautiful . . . he has sung for us, made us sing with him, a little verse of a sacred psalm. How much more he who sings, who says, or in any way brings home to our heart the noble doings, feelings, darings and endurances of a brother man! He has verily touched our hearts as with a live coal from the altar. Perhaps there is no worship more authentic."

A wondrous power indeed has this teacher! And as he more clearly than others can reveal to us, can make us love and worship, what is divine and true and lovely, so the false teacher possesses a terrible power to reveal to us as divine and true what is false and utterly hateful. Terrible indeed is his power, terrible his crime. One melodious line of a poet, the music of which creeps into one's soul and chimes there ever after-one melodious line, I say, insinuating into our soul a falsity or a loathsomeness, a lie and an abomination—what has not that line done? Done what the writer with all his genius and creative power can never again undo.

And we, the students, of what manner of mind we should be? "He only shall be esteemed a scholar," says Fichte, "who through the learned culture of his age has attained a knowledge of the Divine

Idea, or at least strives with life and strength to obtain it."

It is with sole regard to the attainment of such knowledge that I wish (presumptuous as the wish may be) to speak of poetry. All beside this-all things antiquarian, philological, grammatical, biographical, or chronological, however interesting and necessary, shall be considered of secondary importance. For I would rather that any words of mine should help a man, a woman, or child, to recognize the deep meaning of a single poetic thought, than that they should be even to the very highest degree conducive to the acquisition of a merely technical knowledge of poetic literature.

"If the striving," Fichte continues, "is after the outward form, the mere letter, then we have—if the whole circle of knowledge be completed-the complete bungler; if unfinished the progressive bungler."

And yet "who loves not knowledge? Who shall rail against her beauty?" Certainly not such an one as Fichte. For it is not against the beauty of knowledge that he rails, but against the idolatry of knowledge.

"Let her know her place :

She is the second, not the first.
A higher hand must make her mild,
If all be not in vain; and guide
Her footsteps, moving side by side
With wisdom, like the younger child."

He who with Paracelsus feels

"I still must hoard, and heap, and class all truths
With one ulterior object. I must know ;"

or with Wagner, in "Faust," would exclaim, "Zwar weiss ich viel, doch möcht' ich Alles wissen "—he is not a student, he is the progressive bungler. And yet how lofty is even such an idolatry in comparison with that of him who sets up as his object, his idol, not the inanity of mere knowledge, but the gross object of material prosperity. The tendency of the present day-with its self-sufficient mock-virtuous positivism on the one hand, and on the other its refined æsthetic sensualism (to say nothing of coarser and perhaps less dangerous types)—its tendency is to laugh at ideals.

"Give us something real and tangible!" it cries. "What do we care for Divine Ideas, and the like? If we are to devote our lives to toil, to rise up early and late take rest, to live huddled together in the smoke and filth of great cities, we must have some practicable solid satisfactory object to attain.”

Now, without entering upon the question of religious ideals (while I would class together the man who looks upon religion as a necessary social accomplishment and him who sees in art merely a means of æsthetic enjoyment, or of furnishing tastefully his gilded drawing-room and library), I distinctly affirm it to be my belief that what most satisfies, what most

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